Les Projets Que Je Fais, Presque Sans Trêve

Les beaux soirs ou l’espoir bercé mon rêve.

This is probably a little premature to mention, but I think one of my goals in 2009 will be to start on the path to learning French “for real”. I did up to French 30 in school but since that has finished, I basically haven’t used it. And you know… it feels like a waste to have come this far and then to stop. People always think I’m a lot more bilingual than I am, and that sucks for me. I hate speaking French to practice because I know I have a horrible accent. I really need to get over that though, because I’ll never get anywhere otherwise. In any case, I’m thinking of giving that Rosetta Stone software a try, because learning on a computer comes pretty naturally to me. There’s something about a robot tutor that attracts me to a certain point when learning things. It’ll never get frustrated when I keep messing up on the same thing!

I get the feeling that I, and many others, have learning a language built up in their head as an impossible thing. And… it’s hard, but I think I need to change my outlook. First, I don’t need to speak perfect, abstract, academic French. I just need to speak it well enough that I can have a casual conversation with my cousins. So really, it’s like… a little verb work and more vocabulary. And keeping an ear for it. I’m hoping that Podcasts can help with that.

That adds one more long-term goal to the list. It’s funny how I get all these grand ideas when I have the least amount of time. I’ve probably played the guitar 3 times this month. But such is life. The sad part is, the amount of free time I have now will probably seem like a lot, five years from now. Anyways, I did get another art project done, just a funny picture for the other people playing Magic. I might not have mentioned it, except that it brings me to my next point.

So, I showed my picture to some friends, and one of them said “Wow, you must have a lot of time.” I didn’t really think much of it. The tone seemed impressed, and that’s kind of all I hope for, you know? That probably bares me as an immature artist, happy only if others are impressed, but that’s an idea for another day. The point is, he said this phrase. Later, my brother asked me something like, “Does it put you off when people say things like ‘Wow, you must have a lot of time’ when they see your art?”

This was an interesting question, and here’s why. There are a lot of ways to interpret a phrase like that, and how I do will drastically change how I feel. I bring it up because there are a lot of times when people interpret things incorrectly and feel bad about what this implication means, incorrect as it may be. Consider this: you have the choice of how to interpret everything that is said to you or about you. And the truth is, I think we often choose to interpret something negatively when it wasn’t meant like that. Why do we? It’s sabotage, really.

The way I figure it, sometimes people are going to say things without the intention of hurting you. Sometimes, they do want to hurt you. And it takes more positive thoughts to balance out a negative one. So try this: If there is any ambiguity in a statement, try choosing to interpret it in a positive way, as if they meant to commend you.

“Wow, you must have a lot of time.” To some, perhaps that says any or all of, “Do you draw instead of having a social life? This is how you waste your free time? If I had so much time, I could do stuff like this too.” And for all I know, maybe that’s what was meant. But how do any of these interpretations help me at all? Art doesn’t hinder my social life. Art isn’t a waste of time for me. And I agree that anyone can do what I can do. People aren’t born with art skill; it’s just practice. So what else could this statement possibly mean? How about, “Wow, that must have taken a long time because it’s got a lot of detail.” Well, it took me ten hours. That’s quite a bit less time than what I spend on other projects. I could take it as a compliment, perhaps, because it looks like I spent more time on it than I actually did. How does this interpretation help me? It makes me want to not give up, for one thing. It makes me want to get better and continue with vectors, a time-consuming art medium.

This is just an example. I don’t mean to imply that we should start ignoring criticism, hearing only what we want to. All I’m saying is that enough of the time, people really do mean to insult us, so in the times when perhaps they don’t, how about not automatically adding them to the ranks of people trying to tear us down? I really think that most of the time people don’t mean to be hurtful. And even if they did, if you make it into something positive, well that gives me a sense of satisfaction. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Just a thought.